“… I just love Holly, and I wish she were a real person and that she were my friend because I’m so crazy about her,” Stephen King told NPR. “She just walked on in the first book that she was in, ‘Mr. Mercedes,’ and she more or less stole the book … And she stole my heart.” He added: In “Holly,” Gibney, who runs her own private detective agency, starts investigating a string of disappearances. We, the readers, know what happened to the victims: they suffered a rather gruesome fate (I’m being vague here to avoid major spoilers).
Here’s the book’s official synopsis:
When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.
Since Bender worked so extensively on the “Mr. Mercedes” TV series, it begs the question: will the “Holly” series be a spin-off of that? If so, does that mean Justine Lupe (who also reads the “Holly” audiobook) will reprise the role? Or will they start fresh with a new actress? I confess I haven’t seen the TV series, so I can’t comment on Lupe’s take on the character (I did watch “The Outsider” show, though, and thought Cynthia Erivo was great in the role). There’s no indication of where the “Holly” series will end up (“Mr. Mercedes” started off on a now-defunct channel called Audience before making the jump to Peacock), so stay tuned for further updates as they arrive.